As an aspiring fiction writer, I often hear that every tale has one of two basic plots: a man or woman goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. When I first considered reimagining Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Pied Piper story, “The Children of Hameln,” therefore, I conceived of the original version as a quintessential stranger-comes-to-town narrative. After all, “The Children of Hameln” capitalizes on the potential threat that the sudden appearance of an outsider poses for a small community, whose members can only know what the stranger tells them of where he came from, where he will go, and what he wants. With that in mind, I thought a great deal about how I might expand the Pied Piper tale into something new and original without losing the sense of mystery, uncertainty, and danger that makes the Grimms’ version so intriguing. I thus decided that I would use my story to finally answer a few of the fascinating questions (such as Where did the ratcatcher and his magical pipe come from? and What did he do with the abducted children?) so ominously raised in the Grimms’ telling, but that I would do so in ways that only sparked further unease and dark imaginings in a reader’s mind. In order to accomplish my task, I had to provide the Pied Piper with origins, characteristics, and a destination that were as eerily other-worldly and unexpected as his arrival in/disappearance from town, his hypnotic musical abilities, and his odd attire are in the source story. This ended up being something I had a lot of fun with, honestly, as I got to draw on some of my own interests and obsessions. For instance, I haven’t been able to get George Saunders’s “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” out of my head since I read it last semester, so I chose an abandoned amusement park as the Pied Piper’s abode. More significantly, I rooted the Pied Piper’s past and powers in Greek mythology, specifically the legends of Pan, the satyr and god of flocks, rustic music, and mountainsides. It seemed almost too fitting! I felt like I was playing a game as I made a list of details that appear in the original story or were going to appear in my retelling and figured out ways to tie many of them to Pan. In this manner, Hameln became Arcadia, Tennessee, after the region of Greece Pan was said to have inhabited. The ratcatcher’s “fife” became a “pan pipe.” Eugene’s favorite band, which had thus far been unspecified, became Syrinx, the name of the nymph after whom Pan termed his instrument. Even the names of twelve Arcadian children who survived their journey with the ratcatcher were inspired by those of Pan’s twelve sons, which include Eugeneios, Phobos, Xanthos, Daphoineus, and Argos. Later on, moreover, when I added a digital element to my story, I decided to create hyperlink annotations pointing out the most significant allusions to help readers make the connections that shape my story and set it within a long line of fairy tale adaptations that draw on older cultural sources to create a new, unique version. Of course, I also knew I needed a way to follow the Pied Piper’s tale beyond his the children’s disappearance from town that would not extinguish the story’s suspense and surprise by giving the reader too much access to the Pied Piper’s thoughts, motivations, or plans. Since his ability to mystify and terrify depends at least partially on his role as a stranger who has come to town, I could not simply tell my version from his point of view. After all, if I did, the piper would be a man on a journey instead! Once I came to that conclusion, only one real option remained: telling the story from the perspective of a child he’s abducted. Again, this seemed perfect, because such a child would start out as a townsperson encountering the mysterious stranger for the first time, but he would also see firsthand what happened after the Pied Piper left town. Plus, if he were to grow close to the Pied Piper, he could learn more about the Pied Piper and potentially add emotional complexity to my piece! Since I was going to cast the piper in my story as the latest in a line of pipers that reached back through history to Pan, in addition, I thought it would be logical to turn the child into his apprentice. This gave me point of view, and after that, most of the plot formed in my mind as I considered how this specific child would become the apprentice and what must have recently changed to inspire him to tell his story. Finally, as I revised my story, I focused on fixing a few issues of emphasis, in accordance with feedback I had been given by Dr. Kate Lechler and Professor Tom Franklin. I mostly did this through insertion, rather than deletion, largely because I have found this assignment so interesting and fun that I just wanted to continue generating new material. I have truly had a fantastic time coming up with new pieces to add to the Pied Piper story. Thus, in order to underline some of the more disquieting aspects of Eugene’s journey and life with the Pied Piper, I extended certain scenes, giving further description of the children’s time in the abandoned park, adding an earlier (and longer) reference to the Piper’s nighttime visits to the Fun House, and even incorporating a few extra, chilling details about the deaths that occurred during the journey. The last was the one I found most difficult, as those deaths took place while my narrator was in a mind- and emotion-numbing trance. I hope, however, that Eugene’s flat statement of disturbing facts will inspire a visceral reaction within the reader without compromising Eugene’s lack of reaction. In addition, I also inserted a few more lines about Eugene’s crush on Daphne and deleted the second assertion of the Eugene’s father’s cowardice. Both of those changes came directly from Dr. Kate’s astute feedback. On the other hand, the one major tip from Dr. Kate that I did not follow, at least in the draft published here, was her suggestion that I make all the children in Arcadia disabled, either physically, mentally, or developmentally. Dr. Kate thought that this would capitalize on the line about the Piper only taking things that are nuisances and let me explore an unrepresented type of character. I must admit, I was very interested by the idea, and I thought a lot about it. However, in the end, I decided not to implement it for two reasons: First, I wanted Arcadia to seem to have been just like any other failing, rural small town in America before the Piper’s rats (and then the Piper himself) appeared. This makes the story a little more ominous to me, because it suggests that what happened in Arcadia (and in the other towns visited by the Piper) could happen anywhere, including a reader’s hometown. Unfortunately, I believe that widespread disabilities among the town’s children would undermine that aspect of the story by implying that there was already something unusual and unnatural about Arcadia long before the Piper arrived. Second, I think that the line about nuisances is my small nod to the subtle element of parental negligence that I see running through the original Pied Piper stories. In the Grimms’ story, the town’s children are very much on the periphery until the Piper abducts them. For instance, there is no mention of where the children are when all the adult citizens meet to discuss hiring the Piper to rid the town of rats and then again to decide not to pay the Piper. Furthermore, the abduction of all children four years old and older is said to have occurred at either seven o’clock in the morning or noon in the Grimm version; yet only one adult, a babysitter, witnesses it. So where were all the other adults? Why didn’t they notice the mass exodus of their offspring until after the children were gone? It seems to me that the adults of Hameln were more concerned with the rats and their money than their children, so I have tried to quietly point to that in the first part of my story. Thus, I concluded that I wanted to continuing casting the children as potential financial burdens, moral burdens, and sources of marital strains in a way that emphasizes the adults’ failures as parents, instead of in a manner that could somewhat absolve the town's adults of their frustration and justify their need for a reprieve from their responsibilities. I still think it would have been an interesting direction in which to take my story, however, and I may come back to it in the future. In sum, throughout my writing process – as I contemplated expanding the Pied Piper narrative, decided what types of things I wanted to add, figured out how I might tell the extended tale while still leaving the reader wondering and worrying, developed a plot, chose details from the original story to keep and details to tie in to alter, actually wrote it all out, and revised it – I maintained one overarching principle: Make it fresh, make it mine, give it more, but stay true to the spirit of the Pied Piper story. This is why I kept most of the original plot. It’s also why I borrowed a couple of phrases from the Grimms’ version (an idea that came to me after I noticed that certain phrases appeared in every single Baba Yaga story we read) and consciously tried to incorporate prominent details (such as the number of children abducted) from the Grimms’ telling. Finally, it is why I was so determined to emphasize the ominous nature of the story, particularly the way it makes dark implications and suggestions to create a sense of uneasiness. As a fairy tale, the Pied Piper story seems to get overlooked fairly often, but I think the essence of the story has the potential to be as unsettling, powerful, and memorable as almost any other. I just hope my retelling of it demonstrates that to some degree.

References:

Pan the God. n.d. Weebly. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.

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